A Little Flame
by crashmypartyhard
Summary: "You look like...a Della." he says. She narrows her eyes and swallows. Della. Wasn't...there something I read about a woman named Della? ...No. Focus on him. "...Why?"


The door to a vent slowly grinds open, squeaking ever so slightly. A small, ladylike hand quickly retreats back into the depths of the vent after the door touches the wall. A moment passes. The figure looks out, green eyes behind a rabbit mask, scanning the corridor. And then her head turns to the right—she tucks her Baby Jane hair behind her ear. Her dark brown hair is disheveled and dirty.

Her eyes scan the statue that is to her right, and, with another look around for strangers, she pulls herself out of the vent, gripping the top seam of it when she is facing the wall, staring down the vent for a moment. She reaches into the vent for the last time and brings out a hook and a hammer with one hand, looking down and then dropping her means of defense onto a dead body. They bounce once, dully. Thankfully they don't make much of a sound. Her left arm reaches out to the statue and hooks in a curve of its face. Her leg on the same side reaches over and her foot hooks on a different curve in its body. She continues the process slowly, taking next her other leg and, finally, her other arm. When she's done she pauses, then climbs deftly down to the floor.

Her feet now touch the floor, covered by ripped lace tights. It's dark here, but not as dark as it could be. Dead bodies—most dead Splicers—litter the floor. She pulls up her green dress' shoulder back up where it should be, but she knows it's been ripped and repaired too much and that she should probably find a new dress. She walks over to the dead body where she dropped her weapons and crouches down.

On instinct her right hand grabs the hammer and her left the hook. She tucks the hammer underneath her arm and lifts up one side of the Splicer's body to find an EVE hypo. She smiles to herself and shoves the needle into her left wrist and pushes the plunger of the syringe down until the hypo is drained. She feels the rush of the chemical reacting with the ADAM in her body and slowly waits until her eyes become focused again. Looking in the Splicer's pocket she finds some money.

As she reaches over to look in the other pocket of its pants, a song finds its way to her ears, and she turns her head around to look where the song is coming from. A Spider Splicer comes around a corner, and stops walking and singing once he sees her. Their eyes meet. The male Splicer narrows his eyes from behind his rabbit mask.

She doesn't move. She stares back at him with a wide-eyed, deer-in-headlights look. She waits for him to attack.

But he doesn't. His look of surprise fades and he crouches down next to another dead body and begins rifling through its clothes, humming. She narrows her eyes at him, wondering why he didn't attack her. Any usual splicer would have seen her around any body and attacked, wanting the contents for themselves.

She stays to one side and him the other as they search the smattering of bodies. She wonders if there's more human in him than the other usual Splicers. Maybe his body's still trying to reject the effects of ADAM and EVE.

She finds another EVE hypo in one of the bodies, and she can feel his eyes on her for a moment and she becomes paranoid, facing him while she searches bodies instead of having her back to him and relying on sound. He could jump to the walls and crawl to the ceilings before she could even do anything and then she'd be powerless. Dead in moments with those hooks of his.

He doesn't look at her anymore, and doesn't attack.

She half-stands and slowly approaches the Spider Splicer, taking her hammer from underneath her arm and instead holding it in her left hand along with the hook. When she gets within a few feet of him he lifts his head and their eyes meet again. She stops moving. She tries to look innocent, and after a moment of this, she takes another step—slowly, smoothly. His eyes snap down to the EVE hypo in her right hand and then back up to her face.

She's about a foot away now. She sees him clutch his right hook, that one being in his, most likely, dominant hand. She holds out the EVE hypo and he looks down at it for a while.

When he looks back up at her his face looks skeptical. She takes another, smaller, step forward. He could kill her with one blow to the head right now, but, for some reason, she doesn't really care.

A hook is set on the ground, and then his hand reaches out and wraps itself around the EVE hypo. His eyes never leave hers as she lets go and he pulls it towards himself.

He stands and she tries to step back but falls backwards, scared for a moment that he'll kill her with his other hook. But he just injects himself with the hypo and throws the empty syringe on the ground. She watches him from her spot on the ground, waiting.

He walks over and holds out his hand. She stares at him with skepticism like he did to her for a moment, and then she reaches out and takes his hand. He pulls her up from the ground.

They stand there silently for a bout of time. The Splicer then wraps his arms around her loosely for a few seconds and then lets go, runs off, and climbs the walls into the shadows. She's left waiting, wondering.

* * *

i decided to redo this. and stuff. i decided not to delete this story, just redo it. if that's okay. if you guys want me to just have the original as its own story, please, feel free to say. (:


End file.
